_Labor and industry._—On the other hand, Plato has considerable insight into the rôle of labor in production. To be sure, he shares with the other philosophers a certain prejudice against manual labor as degrading to freemen.[129] The mechanical arts call forth reproach.[130] Free citizens should not be burdened with such ignoble occupations,[131] and any person who disobeys this rule shall lose his civic rights until he gives up his trade.[132] Agriculture alone shall be open to them, and only so much of this as will not cause them to neglect their higher welfare.[133] However, this prejudice has been read into some passages in Plato by a forced interpretation. The assertion of Socrates,[134] that craftsmen have not temperance (σωφροσύνη), since they do other people’s business, is made merely to draw Critias into the argument. The statement that all arts having for their function provision for the body are slavish,[135] does not necessarily imply prejudice against physical labor. Such arts are slavish, to Plato, because they have no definite principle of service as gymnastics has. He is merely illustrating the point that it is an inferior type of statesmanship that works without a definite principle for the highest political welfare. The idea, expressed in the _Politics_,[136] that the masses (πλῆθος) cannot acquire political science is a criticism against unprepared statesmanship rather than against labor. Indeed, Plato asserts the same of the wealthy.[137] Moreover, the following facts should be observed: that the prejudice of Plato against the manual arts is chiefly limited to the _Laws_; that even there his prejudice is primarily against retail trade rather than against industry;[138] that in so far as a real hostility exists, its true source is not in any opposition to labor or industry _per se_, but rather in the political belief that only as citizens have leisure for politics can prepared statesmen take the place of superficial politicians,[139] and in the moral feeling that constant devotion merely to the physical necessities of life causes men to neglect the primary purpose of their existence.[140] Modern scholars have usually been extreme in their interpretation of Plato on this point.[141] Such unwarranted generalizations as the following are common: “Il ne découvre dans les professions qui tendent au lucre qu’égoisme, bassesse d’esprit, dégradation des sentiments.” “Platon et Aristote voient dans le commerce et dans l’industrie deux plaies de la société; ils voudraient les extirper à’fond, si cela était possible.”[142] One of the worst misinterpretations has been perpetrated by Roscher, in inferring from the _Republic_ (372 ff.) that Plato “das Leben der Gewerbetreibenden als ein Leben thierischen Behaglichkeit schildert, sie wohl mit Schweinen vergleicht.”[143] Such absurdities are unfortunately not rare, though they might be avoided by a careful reading, even in a translation.[144]